Subject: Haiti, Despised by All: by Eduardo Galeano

World Press Review
December 1996

The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano has written several books
denouncing foreign intervention in Latin America. Decidedly to the left,
his views have a large following among Latin American intellectuals.
Haiti is the country that is treated the worst by the world's powerful.
Bankers humiliate it. Merchants ignore it. And politicians slam their
doors in its face.

Democracy arrived only recently in Haiti. During its short life, this
frail, hungry creature received nothing but abuse. It was murdered in
its infancy in 1991 in a coup led by General Raoul Cedras.

Three years later, democracy returned. After having installed and
deposed countless military dictators, the U.S. backed President Jean
Bertrand Aristide-the first leader elected by popular vote in Haiti's
history-and a man foolish enough to want a country with less injustice.

In order to erase every trace of American participation in the bloody
Cedras dictatorship, U.S. soldiers removed 160,000 pages of records from
the secret archives. Aristide returned to Haiti with his hands tied. He
was permitted to take office as president, but not power. His successor,
Rene Preval, who became president in February, received nearly 90
percent of the vote.

Any minor bureaucrat at the World Bank or the International Monetary
Fund has more power than Preval does. Every time he asks for a credit
line to feed the hungry, educate the illiterate, or provide land to the
peasants, he gets no response. Or he may be told to go back and learn
his lessons. And because the Haitian government cannot seem to grasp
that it must dismantle its few remaining public services, the last shred
of a safety net for the most defenseless people on Earth, its masters
give up on it.

The U.S. invaded Haiti in 1915 and ran the country until 1934. It
withdrew when it had accomplished its two objectives: seeing that Haiti
had paid its debts to U.S. banks and that the constitution was
amended to allow for the sale of plantations to foreigners. Robert
Lansing, then secretary of state, justified the long and harsh military
occupation by saying that blacks were incapable of self-government, that
they had "an inherent tendency toward savagery and a physical in ability
to live a civilized life."

Haiti had been the jewel in the crown, France's richest colony: one big
sugar plantation, harvested by slave labor. The French philosopher
Montesquieu explained it bluntly: "Sugar would be too expensive if it
were not produced by slaves. These slaves are blacks .... it is not
possible that God, who is a very wise being, would have put a soul . ..,
in such an utterly black body." Instead, God had put a whip in the overseer's hand.

In l903, the black citizens of Haiti gave Napoleon Bonaparte's troops a
tremendous beating, and Europe has never for given them for this
humiliation inflicted upon the white race. Haiti was the first free
country in South America or the Caribbean. The free people raised their
flag over a country in ruins. The land of Haiti had been devastated by
the sugar monoculture and then laid waste by the war against France. One
third of the population had fallen in combat. Then Europe began its
blockade. The newborn nation was condemned to solitude. No one would buy
from it, no one would sell to it, nor would any nation recognize it.

Not even Simon Bolivar had the courage to establish diploma
tic relations with the black nation. Bolivar was able to reopen his
campaign for the liberation of the Americas, after being defeated by
Spain, thanks to help from Haiti. The Haitian government sup plied him
with seven ships, arms, and soldiers, setting only one condition: that
he free the slaves-something that had not occurred to him. Bolivar kept
his promise, but after his victory, he turned his back on the nation
that had saved him. When he convened a meeting in Panama of the American
nations, he invited England, but not Haiti.

The U.S. did not recognize Haiti until 70 years later. By then, Haiti
was already in the bloody hands of the military dictators, who devoted
the meager resources of this starving nation toward relieving its debt
to France. Europe demanded that Haiti pay France a huge indemnity to
atone for its crime against French dignity.

The history of the abuse of Haiti, which in our lifetime has become a
tragedy, is also the story of Western civilization's racism.